Harnessing climate information systems and artificial intelligence (ai) innovations in enhancing resilience to climate change in Africa

Abstract

The ocean-climate relationship determines a unique tropical architecture which produces increased seasonal and temporal variation of wind, waves, currents and thermal stratification. The objective of the is to identify how Climate Information Systems (CIS) and emerging artificial intelligence (AI) technologies can benefit Africa's climate change resilience, with a focus on Kenya's exposed coastal economies. The study employed mixed-methods approach on the selected population stratified random sampling was used to select 225 individuals who were administered structured questionnaires, interviews and Focused Group Discussion. Quantitative and qualitative methods were both used to study data such as Statistical packages and regression analysis. The results were that CIS has a high level of awareness of 40.9% "Very Aware," and 41.8% of the respondents use AI occasionally. Regression analysis reveals a high positive relationship (R = 0.789) of CIS and AI with resilience explaining 61.9% of variance, highlighting indicators such as CIS awareness (coefficient = 0.441) and use of AI (coefficient = 0.358) as excellent predictors, whereas bottlenecks such as lack of infrastructure (36.0%) and awareness (28.4%) hinder effective implementation. The study recommends that mounting of gas analyzer sensors on smartphone to convert physical changes into electrical signals that can be interpreted by AI algorithm systems and automatically send collected data to various stations. The stakeholders should raise awareness and education on CIS and AI, invest in necessary infrastructure, and leverage partnership among the government, academia, and the private sector to mitigate challenges and develop resilience to climate change in Kenya's coastal economies.